[antimedia] antimedia: Living in the looney bin

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by antimedia:
Living in the looney bin
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1145333629.shtml


   I've been searching for a way to excerpt enough of the Iraq
   Perspectives Project report so that you would believe what I'm about
   to write here. I finally decided that you're just going to have to
   trust me that the one passage I'm quoting is representative of the
   whole. What I'm writing here covers several tens of pages of
   information that (trust me) you do not want to have to plow through.
   Life in Iraq began to take on a bizarre nature after the Gulf War of
   1991. Contrary to logic and reason, Saddam began to fear a coup or
   overthrow much more than international pressure. While outwardly
   acting as though he was continuing a WMD program, he privately
   admitted that the program had been severely curtailed as a result of
   the war and the subsequent inspections.
   Yet his pronouncements on the subject, even to his closest advisors,
   were so confusing and contradictory that not even they really knew for
   sure what was going on. Furthermore, Saddam splintered security even
   further, creating ever more rings of protection around himself and
   subjecting even his most trusted advisors to the constant scrutiny of
   the intelligence services.
   The intelligence services were even spying on themselves, to the point
   that one officer complained that they would never have enough spies to
   spy on all the spies! By the time Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the
   situation in Iraq had deteriorated to the point that no one in Iraq
   knew what was true or what was untrue, and many believed the lies that
   were being routinely told.
   Even worse, Saddam made it very clear that he did not want to hear bad
   news of any kind. (Bearers of bad news were often killed or thrown in
   prison.) The willingness to lie, to tell Saddam good news even when
   the opposite was true, became so pervasive that no one, not even
   Saddam, knew for certain what was true any more. (Anyone who might
   have known certainly wasn't going to say so publicly.)
   Thus Iraq arrived at this bizarre conclusion.

     For many months after the 2003 war, a number of senior Iraqi
     officials continued to believe it possible (though they adamantly
     insisted they possessed no direct knowledge) that Iraq still
     possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere. In addition to
     Saddam's purposeful ambiguity on the issue, coalition interviewers
     discovered three other mutually reinforcing ideas as to why this
     possibility might be true:
     * Iraq possessed and used WMD in the past. Given the growing danger
       from Iran's emerging WMD program, Iraq would likely need them
       again.
     * While none of the Iraqi officials admitted to personally knowing
       of WMD stockpiles, the idea that in a compartmentalized and
       secretive regime other military units or organizations might have
       WMD was plausible to them.<'li>
     * Finally, and ironically, the public confidence of so many Western
       governments, especially based on CIA information, made at least
       one senior official believe the contention that Iraq possessed
       such weapons might be true.^17

   It should come as no surprise then that world leaders and their
   intelligence agencies believed that Iraq still had an active WMD
   program. In fact, even now no one can be certain that they didn't.
   (The only thing we know for certain is that Saddam had every intention
   of ramping the program back up as soon as the sanctions were lifted,
   which he fully expect France and Russia to help him do.)
   Rumor has it that Saddam spirited away tons of chemical weapons to
   Syria right before the war. There is even corroborating evidence to
   buttress the claim. There is equal evidence that it is untrue, and
   Syria denies it (for what little that is worth.)
   We may never know whether or not Saddam still had WMD when we invaded.
   There isn't anyone inside Iraq whose word we could trust because even
   they don't know for certain.
   To criticize the administration, then, for not knowing, or for lying
   about Iraq's WMD programs, ignores the facts. The adamant claims of
   those who seem certain that Iraq did not possess any WMD on the eve of
   the war are just as uncertain (and based on equally as confusing and
   contradictory "evidence") as the adamant claims that Iraq did have
   WMD. Neither position is provable or disprovable, even inside Iraq!